Bedouin wanders across Biblical manuscript

[Ebusitanus]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...7/s1415584.htm

Fragments of a Biblical manuscript dating back to the last Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 135 AD Judaea, have been uncovered near the Dead Sea.
After four decades with a dearth of new finds, archaeologists had resigned themselves to believing the desert caves in the modern-day West Bank had already yielded all their secrets from the Roman era.
"It's simply sensational, a dream come true," archaeology professor Hanan Eshel, a Biblical specialist at Israel's Bar Ilan University, said.
For the past 20 years, he has scoured the Judaean desert around the Dead Sea, overturning stone after stone in search of Biblical parchments.
He has been trumped by Bedouin, who stumbled across the miniature fragments last August.
Only a few centimetres long, the pieces contain extracts in Hebrew from the Biblical Book of Leviticus.
Damaged by bat droppings and lying under a film of dirt in a cave near the Ein Gedi oasis, the Bedouin pocketed the manuscripts and began an arduous bidding process with Professor Eshel.
"Thanks to this find, we now know a little more about the troubled period that gave rise to the Jewish revolt against the Romans," the Professor said.


The second Jewish revolt against Roman occupation, which was led by Simeon Bar Koshba, saw 900 Jewish towns and villages pillaged, 10,000 Romans killed, Jerusalem recaptured and Jews banned from entering its confines.
"We know these parchments came from a Torah scroll used by Jews in the spring of 135 during Passover, which they then hid in the caves to save it from the Roman legions," Professor Eshel said.
Historians believed Jews managed to hide 14 Torah scrolls in the caves, but Professor Eshel says the latest manuscripts prove there is a 15th such scroll.
The fragments have been further damaged by the Bedouin, who glued them together and stowed the whole thing in aluminium foil.
It was in this state that Professor Esher found and bought them for $US3,000, beating down the Bedouins' original asking price of $US20,000.
"Despite all this, we can identify the Hebrew letters," he said.
He points out words from Leviticus that relate to the escape of the Israelites from Egypt and the building of temporary shanty houses in the desert.
Manuscripts dating from the same period were discovered between 1952 and 1961 in the same area near the Dead Sea.
In 1947, the famous Dead Sea scrolls, dated to the first century BC, were discovered by chance in Qumran by an Arab shepherd.
- AFP